Is it possible print multiple pages of a Word, PowerPoint or PDF document on a single page natively from iPhone 4S?

Otherwise, are there other apps out there that allows me to do so?

What I mean by printing multiple pages of a document on a single page is something what we have on the usual Mac OS and Windows OS, where there is often a "handout" option to print multiple slides or pages of a document onto a single physical paper page.

4 Answers
4

I am not aware of any apps that can do that. You certainly can't print handouts with the native printing menu.

You could create the handout document on a computer and then click the "Save as PDF" option in the print dialogue. Then you could transfer the PDF handout file to your iPhone, which you could then print from there.

Not natively, but you can with Printopia running on a Mac connected to your printer.

To do this, you need to first create a very simple Automator action. Open up Automator, and create a Print Plugin. For the Workflow, you only need to add the "Run Shell Script" action. Make sure the action is set to "Pass input: as arguments". The shell script needs only a single line:

lp -o number-up=4 -o media=Letter "$*"

The specifics of the line might depend on your needs. In this case, I'm printing to my default printer (so is't not specified). I found that without the "media" option the result was was not scaled properly. You can define number-up as either 1, 2, 4, or 16.

If you want to specify a specific printer, use the following instead:

lp -d <printer> -o number-up=4 -o media=Letter "$*"

where <printer> is one of your print queues. You can find these by executing lpstat -a at a terminal prompt.

That's it. Now save the action. I saved mine as "4-Up Print".

Next open Printopia in the System Preferences. Click the + to add a new destination, select "Add PDF Workflow", and pick the Automator Workflow that you created in the previous step.

When printing from your iOS device, pick the newly created Printopia Air Print destination. Obviously you need to be on the same local network as the Mac.

Check out Printopia. Not sure if it will do what you are looking to do from your iOS device but worth trying. Might want to contact the Printopia developer to see if they offer that capability before purchasing the app for the App Store.